For those that have read it, here is my story on how I came about getting this new snake...

After the accident and worried about the car being totalled, I started to look again for a new car but wasn't sure if I was going to get another Cobra, Mach 1 or maybe switch to the other side with a vette. After looking some more, I became more interested in the Mach 1 and thought about picking one up. They are wonderful cars and have enjoyed driving my friends Azure Blue Mach 1 but still didn't seem right.

I thought about the 2003 Cobras as well but they are still expensive and don't need 1,000,000,000,000,000+ hp. My wallet and license has been raped repeatedly by the court system in VA and don't feel the need to have my job security affected by 6 months+ of living in a cold room wearing orange.

I was hesitent on getting a 2001 Cobra due to the year of the car and the 99 Cobras were out of the question due to the recalls as well as age. I ended up talking to a friend about this and never took into consideration the time and effort that is put into the Cobra motors compared to the Mach 1s as they are hand assembled instead of done on an assembly line. This ended up making me decide to look around and see what I might be able to find.

When I started looking, I was finding a lot of Cobras on autotrader.com that were modified or had higher mileage than I wanted. I was also having difficulty finding any Cobras locally as well. I started widening my search and found a couple in New Jersey.

One Cobra was black and modified. The other Cobra was white and a convertable. The black one had me tempted due to the suspension mods. It had a lot of mods that I wanted to do but couldn't see how clean the car was. The mileage was high as well. The white Cobra looked great but had a replacement motor in her. It's great that the engine was replaced but with what? Did they just put a Mach motor in and slap the signed covers on there? What other problems does it have?

After having a bunch of questions running through my head, I changed my mind about NJ and started looking elsewhere.

Autotrader.com is great for looking for cars but could not find the one I wanted anywhere in the US. It was either too much or too high of mileage. After a lot of hair pulling, I decided to look towards Ebay.com.

I spent probably no more than a minute looking before I found the car I wanted with the right price tag. At first I was skeptical but was still overly excited that night about it. I ended up not sleeping and started calling the company shortly after I got into work. I talked to the dealer about the car and asked for a carfax on the car to confirm what he was saying was true. He told me no problem and sent me the information. After reading the report and the users feedback, I knew this was the one! I called the dealer back and started making arrangements to pick up the car.

I ended up leaving work early to take care of some errands and then picked up my brother to go with me to Cleveland, OH that night. I wanted to leave around 5 but 3 1/2 hours later, we were finally leaving the Hampton Roads area heading northbound.

I tried to sleep but there was no luck in doing so. I doni't know if it was due to the 5+ cups of coffee or the adrenalene rush I felt that was keeping me up. I miscalculated how long the drive would be and 8 hours later ended up stopping to get some sleep.

We wake up and get moving again at 9am. We slept a lil bit but felt like I was still on crack from wanting to get into the new Cobra. The fact that I was completely tired of being in the rental car did not help at all.

After getting breakfast and driving another 4 hours, we finally arrived that the dealer.

Sadly, the photos lied. If they didn't, I would have been there the night before! The car was absolutely beautiful and better than expected! I test drove the car some than had my brother drive it. After he was done, he confirmed my thoughts about the car and the deal was made!